Two years af­ter tip­toe­ing in­to the pro­tein degra­da­tion space with a dis­cov­ery pact cen­tered on neu­rode­gen­er­a­tion, Ab­b­Vie is wad­ing deep­er to ex­plore the more com­mon ap­pli­ca­tions in can­cer and im­muno­log­i­cal dis­eases.

The phar­ma gi­ant is hand­ing Fron­tier Med­i­cines $55 mil­lion up­front to get things start­ed while promis­ing to re­im­burse its pre­clin­i­cal R&D costs. In ad­di­tion to drug can­di­dates that tar­get E3 lig­as­es — a key mem­ber of the body’s nat­ur­al degra­da­tion sys­tem — Fron­tier will al­so be scout­ing small mol­e­cule binders to tar­gets.

At the core of Fron­tier’s plat­form, CEO Chris Var­ma pre­vi­ous­ly ex­plained to End­points News, is some­thing they call chemo­pro­teomics. By ex­am­in­ing tem­po­rary pock­ets in pro­teins, they find new ways to bind tar­gets usu­al­ly con­sid­ered un­drug­gable.

The plat­form has opened up a vast ar­ray of tar­gets, he sug­gest­ed in a state­ment. Team­ing up with Ab­b­Vie will cre­ate a shared pipeline sep­a­rate from its in­ter­nal one, and the big­ger part­ner will be ful­ly re­spon­si­ble for clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment once a pro­gram cross­es the thresh­old.

Fron­tier is based out of South San Fran­cis­co, just min­utes from the R&D hub Ab­b­Vie has blue­print­ed in Oys­ter Point. In ad­di­tion to the up­front, it’s el­i­gi­ble for more than $1 bil­lion in mile­stones, $45 mil­lion of which are lined up for the com­ing year.

Tar­get­ed pro­tein degra­da­tion and chemo­pro­teomics are among the key strate­gic fo­cus ar­eas at Ab­b­Vie, said Jose-Car­los Gutiér­rez-Ramos, VP of dis­cov­ery.

It’s not alone. Sanofi, Roche, Bay­er, Gilead and Ver­tex have all inked their own pro­tein degra­da­tion pacts, high­light­ing a slate of pi­o­neer­ing as well as up-and-com­ing play­ers. While can­cer tar­gets loom large, im­munol­o­gy is al­so emerg­ing as a key field of in­ter­est.

Back in 2018 the com­pa­ny tapped Mis­sion Ther­a­peu­tics to un­earth some deu­biq­ui­ty­lat­ing en­zymes to tack­le Alzheimer’s and Parkin­son’s dis­ease. One year ago it chose a pan­el that’s go­ing in­to fur­ther char­ac­ter­i­za­tion and screen­ing.

Despite whispers of a busy year for M&A, deal activity in the pharma space is actually down 30% on a semi-annualized basis, according to PwC’s latest report on deal activity. But don’t rule out larger deals in the second half of the year, the consultants said.

PwC pharmaceutical and life sciences consulting solutions leader Glenn Hunzinger expects to see Big Pharma companies picking up earlier stage companies to try and fill pipeline gaps ahead of a slew of big patent cliffs. Though a bear market continues to maul the biotech sector, Hunzinger said recent deals indicate that pharma companies are still paying above current trading prices.

Following the Supreme Court’s historic decision on Friday to overturn Americans’ constitutional right to an abortion after almost 50 years, Attorney General Merrick Garland sought to somewhat reassure women that states will not be able to ban the prescription drug sometimes used for abortions.

Following the decision, the New England Journal of Medicine also published an editorial strongly condemning the reversal, saying it “serves American families poorly, putting their health, safety, finances, and futures at risk.”

The story of Amryt Pharma’s candidate for the genetic skin condition epidermolysis bullosa, or EB, will soon enter another chapter.

After the Irish drugmaker’s candidate, dubbed Oleogel-S10 and marketed as Filsuvez, was handed a CRL earlier this year, the company announced in a press release that it plans to submit a formal dispute resolution request for the company’s NDA for Oleogel-S10.

After attacks from activist investors and disappointing returns on share prices, Radius Health has now agreed to new ownership, a direction resulting in leaving the Nasdaq.

Radius Health, a biotech out of Massachusetts with one approved product in its arsenal, announced Thursday morning that it agreed to be acquired by two VC firms: Gurnet Point Capital and Patient Square Capital. The deal, worth around $890 million, will include debt assumption and the payout of $1 CVR per share for investors. And on top of that, OrbiMed is providing debt financing.

GSK, newly branded and soon-to-be demerged, shared interim results from its Phase II trial on its chronic hepatitis B treatment, one that it says has the “potential to lead to a functional cure.”

At a presentation at the EASL International Liver Congress, GSK shared that in around 450 patients who received its hep B drug bepirovirsen for 24 weeks, just under 30% had hepatitis B surface antigen and viral DNA levels that were too low to detect.